Pod Insights The Rest Is Politics 399. Trump vs. Putin, How to Stop Farage, and Kashmir Explained About this episode After 100 days of Trump 2.0, is he finally warming to Zelensky following their dramatic Vatican meeting? Is Reform UK’s rise really unstoppable? What’s next for India and Pakistan as the fight for Kashmir ramps up?
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Transcript 10,245 words · 12 speakers
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2:18 Speaker 02 This episode is brought to you by Welch's Fruit Snacks. Back to school season can be tough on parents. But choosing a snack you and your kids can both get behind doesn't have to be. Stock up on Welch's Fruit Snacks. Made with whole fruit and now made with no artificial dyes. It's a snack kids already love and one you can feel good about giving them. Go back to school with Welch's Fruit Snacks. Now made with no artificial dyes.
2:53 Alastair Campbell? Welcome to The Rest is Politics with me, Alastair Campbell.
2:55 Rory Stewart? And with me Rory Stewart.
2:56 Alastair Campbell? So Rory, I think we should kick off very briefly just recording the fact that we're very happy that Mark Carney has been re-elected as Prime Minister after his few weeks as Prime Minister.
3:05 Rory Stewart? And obviously we're totally objective and neutral on this.
3:07 Alastair Campbell? Very neutral, very objective, but very, very glad that he's won. And also I think that although it's not clear yet whether he's going to get a majority, probably going to be a little bit short of it. Interestingly, the two main parties have actually got a huge chunk of the vote which are going against the trend. But I think if he winning and if Albanese wins in Australia next week, I think that will settle down this sense that the world is all moving in one direction.
3:31 Rory Stewart? We'll talk a lot about this when we get on to local elections, but you're right. Our story last week with Australia is about fragmentation. The story in Britain's about fragmentation, but sometimes there's a different thing that happens. And it happened a bit when Theresa May went against Jeremy Corbyn. These moments where things seem to be at such a crisis that everybody ends up returning almost the 1960s, 70s pattern of voting for the two main parties and the small parties get driven out.
3:58 Alastair Campbell? So we'll talk lots about Canada as the dust settles and it becomes clear. But today we're going to focus on Kashmir, Ukraine and as you say, the local elections. So why don't you start off with one of your famous explainers on. Kashmir, don't do what Donald Trump did and say that this conflict goes back fifteen hundred years.
4:18 Rory Stewart? Been going on a thousand years, yeah, exactly.
4:20 Alastair Campbell? Because I think we're really talking about nineteen forty seven, aren't we, I think.
4:23 Rory Stewart? Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So Kashmir, incredibly beautiful Highland area on the modern India-Pakistan border. And as you say, we won't get into the deep history, but fundamentally, by nineteen forty seven, the time partition, this was a place with a majority Muslim population, but with a ruler, a Maharaja, who was a Hindu. And he was extremely indecisive and couldn't quite decide whether he was going to ally himself with India or Pakistan. In fact, for a moment, it looked like he wanted to be independent. And in the end, a third of Kashmir ended up going to Pakistan and two thirds to India,
5:01 Rory Stewart? leaving a large Muslim population in India who frequently felt that they did not want to be part of India, and leading to border clashes and real tensions between India and Pakistan. In the nineteen eighties, there was a serious insurgency in Kashmir against the Indian government. In the two thousands, there were a lot of uprisings. And then fast forward to the modern day, there was a big bomb attack in twenty sixteen, and there was a big bomb attack in twenty nineteen. And then most recently, there's been this very, very nasty attack where Indian tourists, including a couple on their wedding, travelling up with ponies to see a beautiful mountain
5:44 Rory Stewart? valley, were attacked by people with guns. And this is happening at a very dangerous time, because although we haven't focused a lot on India-Pakistan rivalry, they are two nuclear armed powers. Modi will be under a lot of pressure to respond and link the attack to the Pakistan government and military.
6:03 Alastair Campbell? Well, they did it from minute one. So twenty six people killed. And also, there's a third country to throw into the mix, both in term, I think it's the only three-way nuclear junction on the planet, because you've got China there as well. Part of Kashmir is China-controlled, and India and China have had little skirmish, well, quite big skirmishes in the past. And generally, Pakistan tends to get the support of China, US tends to support India. And you're right, Modi is under massive pressure and probably welcoming that pressure to some extent, because, and his language has been very, very strong. He sent up one of his real tough guys to take control and the the local politicians have essentially been excluded from some of those discussions.
6:47 Alastair Campbell? The other thing that really fascinates me about this is this thing about water and the water treaty that was signed in nineteen sixty, I think it was. And there was a quote I saw from the head of the, one of the heads of the World Bank, Ismail Sarageldan, who was Egyptian, World Bank Vice President, and he said, the wars of the next century will be fought over, over water. So this deal was done at a time when Pakistan's population was forty six million and it's now two hundred and forty, two hundred and fifty. India's population was four hundred and thirty six million and it's now one point four billion and three hundred million people rely on their water from this, this flow of water, this Indus River basin.
7:29 Alastair Campbell? And the other thing I hadn't quite realised, you know this area way better than I do, most of that is coming from glaciers that thanks to climate change are now melting away and they've lost something like eighty tonnes of, of water. So India threatening to stop the flow of water into Pakistan, they've threatened it before, they've never done it, but that could, if that did happen, that's going to be even more dangerous probably than the fighting that's going on now and the skirmishes on the line of control.
7:58 Rory Stewart? I think two other things to add in. One is, I was very surprised, looking at the figures, how much the relationship between Pakistan and India's economy has changed so quickly. So in nineteen eighty nine, the average person in Pakistan was twice as wealthy as the average person in India and twice as wealthy as the average person in China, so about six hundred dollars a head when China and India run about three hundred dollars a head.
8:22 Alastair Campbell? Was that a numbers thing? What was that? Why were they doing better? Because Pakistan's basically still agrarian, isn't it?
8:27 Rory Stewart? Yeah, yeah, but India's economy in nineteen eighty nine had been basically shackled since the war by some very, very poor economic policy and licenced rage and corruption. And Pakistan had been more Washington consensus, more open to the world, more trade, more investment. From nineteen eighty nine onwards, things begin to change very quickly. China ends up by two thousand and four going from being half as wealthy to twice as wealthy as Pakistan and India's beginning to catch up. By twenty fourteen. India is creeping ahead and China is by now streets ahead, right? If you take it to the present day, right, so not very long after.
9:04 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
9:05 Rory Stewart? Today, Pakistan is on one thousand five hundred dollars. India's on nearly three thousand, so it's nearly twice as wealthy per capita. And China is nine times as wealthy per capita, nearly fourteen thousand dollars. So Pakistan is in this very odd position where it would have felt not very long ago, even as recently as two thousand and four, that at least on a per capita basis, it was almost India's equal. And really, the story has been that Modi's increasingly not talking about Pakistan. And that may be helpful because there's a sense in which this attack is not quite like the October seventh attack.
9:41 Alastair Campbell? October, you're talking about October seven, Israel, Gaza?
9:43 Rory Stewart? Yes, it's not experienced by Indians as an existential threat to their security in quite the same way. It's inflamed people, there's a lot of anti-Muslim sentiments, a lot of anti-Pakistan sentiment. But because Modi's taken the focus off Pakistan so much over the last ten years, I don't think he's under quite as much political pressure to respond.
10:01 Alastair Campbell? That's interesting because you're seeing an awful lot of Kashmiri students in particular being physically attacked, being hounded out of their schools and universities. So is that right that it doesn't have the same kind of effect? Because I was watching one of those Indian, I don't know if you ever watch, is it NDTV? And, oh my God, they love to shout at each other at any time, at the best of times. But this was really, it felt like on the verge of violence.
10:28 Rory Stewart? So one way in which the comparison that you're making works is that, like in Gaza, there's been a period for some years now where people have thought of Kashmir as very peaceful.
10:37 Alastair Campbell? Modi's had a deliberate tourism strategy there.
10:39 Rory Stewart? Absolutely.
10:40 Alastair Campbell? And the numbers are quite dramatic, the numbers have really gone up.
10:44 Rory Stewart? So he did this thing, which was very controversial, which is he took away the autonomy of Kashmir, he made it a federally administered territory, which means it's run much more directly by Delhi.
10:53 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
10:53 Rory Stewart? Brought in all the tourists. And so for many Indians, they've seen it as a particularly peaceful period and people stopped thinking really about Kashmir. So in that sense, this has been a more kind of shocking and surprising event.
11:05 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
11:05 Rory Stewart? When Indians have been lulled into the sense.
11:07 Alastair Campbell? They've also, I mean, Indian Foreign Diplomatic Service has been calling in. Ambassadors, High Commissioners, essentially giving them a long story of how they believe that Pakistan has always been behind these kinds of attacks in the past. Now, whether that is true or not, it kind of in this context doesn't matter because that is the narrative that has already taken hold. And that has led to borders being closed, diplomats being kicked out of each other's countries. And so I I sort of sense that this is really, really quite tense now.
11:36 Rory Stewart? And there will be a military strike of some sort, because that's what he did the last two times.
11:41 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, and they're both nuclear powers.
11:43 Rory Stewart? And they're both nuclear.
11:43 Alastair Campbell? And the next to China.
11:44 Rory Stewart? And the next. So we have to watch what the military strike is. And there are basically two extremes. The gentler extreme, which probably wouldn't create a big conflict, is an attack on a small terrorist camp somewhere within the Kashmir zone of Pakistan. The other extreme would be an attack against a Pakistan military facility within Pakistan proper. And again, a big difference between whether he does a drone strike, planes, or whether he fires missiles. If he fires missiles, nobody knows what the warhead on the missile is. So that's a really, really dangerous thing to do. And then, on the other hand, you've got this man called General Asim Munia, who's the Pakistan Chief of the Army.
12:22 Alastair Campbell? He's the guy who says that Kashmir is our jugular vein.
12:25 Rory Stewart? Absolutely. Really incendiary. So that speech you're talking about, he's talking to expatriate Pakistanis, really whipping up this Kashmirist view. He's a man who unusually for the head of the army staff, came from quite a conservative Islamic background. His father's a mullah. He memorized the Quran. He went to a madrassa. He very much is on the nationalist side. He's very much been driving because essentially Pakistan is still controlled by the military, as we've discussed, trying to get the economy off the ground. But as the Pakistan economy's weakened, as Pakistan's feeling nationally humiliated, there is a real risk that he can use nationalism as a reason to generate a much bigger attack
13:07 Rory Stewart? against India. So I guess people worrying about this, worry the worst case scenario is India strikes too hard and aggressively. Pakistan feels forced to respond and then it takes off.
13:18 Alastair Campbell? It does feel to me that this, maybe it's because the Middle East is going on, Ukraine is going on, and we're going to talk about that in a minute. It feels to me, though, that this is getting disproportionately little. Debate and coverage. And I think that will make India feel much more emboldened. I don't feel they feel any sense of restraint. I mean, the European Union put out a statement calling for restraint. Trump did that ridiculous thing on the plane about this battle's been going on for fifteen hundred years.
13:45 Rory Stewart? Mm hmm.
13:45 Alastair Campbell? In fact, it's
13:46 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
13:47 Alastair Campbell? Since nineteen forty seven, essentially, this battle. I think it's one of the reasons why we wanted to talk about it is because it just feels like this is almost going under the radar.
13:54 Rory Stewart? And much less US influence.
13:56 Alastair Campbell? And that's dangerous.
13:57 Rory Stewart? Yeah. And and as you will remember from your time in office, the US had a huge focus on Pakistan when they were in Afghanistan. So there was this AfPAC strategy. Pakistan received billions of dollars of assistance, right the way through to Hillary Clinton, Obama, everybody was thinking about Pakistan. You know, it was considered almost more than Afghanistan as the biggest existential threat. It was where people were worried about terrorism, they were worried about governance, they worried about corruption, all sort of stuff. That's all stopped. Since the US withdrew from Afghanistan, there's been very little focus on Pakistan, very little funds going to Pakistan. China's also withdrawn from Pakistan, partly because it's short of cash, its economy's struggling. So they did have these kind of forty one billion dollar Belt and Road initiatives. They slowed those down. And Trump, as you say, clearly
14:42 Rory Stewart? doesn't care.
14:43 Alastair Campbell? He hasn't even appointed an ambassador to India yet.
14:45 Rory Stewart? Right.
14:45 Alastair Campbell? Which you just thought if India was high up his priorities, he would have done.
14:48 Rory Stewart? Yeah. So even four months ago, the US administration would have seen this as one of the greatest threats in the world, you know, right up there with the Middle East, with North Korea. India, Pakistan would have been there because they're too nuclear on past, but Trump doesn't look like he's going to get involved.
15:01 Alastair Campbell? What do you know about this group, Lashkar Atyba, LET, that have, so this group called the Resistance Front, which is part of a faction of of the LET, have claimed responsibility? And as I understand it, I mean, historically, they are thought to be very, very close to the Pakistani intelligence services. Do you think that is what makes the Indians feel able to say this essentially is Pakistan state sponsored terrorism?
15:27 Rory Stewart? Yeah. So the core of this is the Inter Services Intelligence Agency, which is the most senior. Famous bit of Pakistan military intelligence, which was actually run by Asamini, the current chief of the army staff. And Lashka Taiba, Jaish Mohammed and actually the Afghan Taliban have all had very, very strong links to this. And this is partly to do with Pakistan believing that it needs to support these groups to give itself defence and depth against India. It's been part of Pakistan military doctrine for a long time. Now, the nature of those links, very, very difficult to pin down. And obviously Pakistan denies these links. Very difficult to trace the link of a particular Pakistan intelligence officer to a particular attack.
16:11 Rory Stewart? Is it the case that because they gave them funding in the past or trained someone in the past who then does an attack? They're responsible for that attack. But yes, those links into the ISI, I'm afraid, are very deep and very strong. And if India wants to emphasise that, they definitely can.
16:27 Alastair Campbell? Okay, another happy story, Ukraine.
16:31 Rory Stewart? Yep.
16:31 Alastair Campbell? I have to say, I thought the picture of Trump and Zelensky inside the Vatican at the Pope's funeral was pretty remarkable. You had Trump on the plane over, do one of his very Trumpian statements where he said he's got to go to the funeral because he won the Catholic vote. And then he gave all these numbers about how he won the Catholic vote. And so I was just in my usual Trump rage mode about that. And then about the fact he was wearing a blue suit and he was sort of fiddling with his phone and Melania was, you know, she looked a bit appalled at the whole thing. And then this meeting emerged in this, one of the most beautiful parts of the Vatican.
17:14 Alastair Campbell? Two very ordinary looking chairs, you know, those chairs you see at conferences and wedding receptions that look really uncomfortable.
17:22 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
17:22 Alastair Campbell? Two chairs like that.
17:23 Rory Stewart? Little red chair with brass around it.
17:25 Alastair Campbell? And they had this, one of the Vatican guys in sort of, you know, the gear, the full gear, who was minding either Zelensky or Trump. And you could see him getting a bit flustered as to what was going on. And suddenly somebody gets two chairs and there's Trump and Zelensky sitting head to head.
17:39 Rory Stewart? They sit in this massive empty hall on these two little wedding chairs.
17:42 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, these two little chairs.
17:43 Rory Stewart? With no aides or staff or press.
17:45 Alastair Campbell? Nobody there, no interpreter, no note taker, nothing.
17:47 Rory Stewart? But a photographer gets it from a distance.
17:48 Alastair Campbell? Great. Well, no, I suspect it was their own photographer. I think the pictures I saw came out through the Ukrainians.
17:53 Rory Stewart? Just tell us how do you think this might have happened? I mean, in your time in government, something that dramatic.
18:01 Rory Stewart? You know, the US president meeting the president of Ukraine in the middle of a war in this incredible room in the Vassikum with photographers around.
18:09 Alastair Campbell? It does happen.
18:09 Rory Stewart? What would have, is it just they're chatting and they say, why don't we sit down? Or do you think the aides have negotiated, was it planned in advance? Do you think it's spontaneous?
18:16 Alastair Campbell? I don't know, but there's a, there's quite a famous picture in the build up to the Iraq war at a European summit where there's a picture, I'm sort of hovering in the background, but Tony and Shirak are having this very, very intense. And we should try and dig it up. It's because you can see, if you didn't know what the issue was, you can tell these are two people who are not agreeing about it. They don't look angry, but that, and that, that happened sort of organically.
18:43 Rory Stewart? So proper spontaneous, organic thing.
18:45 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, basically, you know, look, we're, we're here in the same place. Let's kind of have this out.
18:49 Rory Stewart? Okay.
18:50 Alastair Campbell? But other times, particularly when you do have these, I mean, I think I've said to you before, the most amazing funeral I ever went to was the King of Jordan.
18:57 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
18:57 Alastair Campbell? Because you had, we were all held in this kind of, I don't even know what it was, this sort of holding room, and there were about 120 world leaders there.
19:05 Rory Stewart? All of whom are networking around the room.
19:07 Alastair Campbell? Just moving around the room. And some of them, so like Clinton would just vanish off and on his own and start talking to you and these people, where's he gone now? And you do get an awful lot of stuff done like that. And what was in, what I thought was interesting about this, Trump's, look, you know, we both have very, very strong views about Trump and the way that he operates. But it made me wonder whether that showdown in the, in the Oval Office, where Zelensky was bullied and intimidated by Trump, by Vance, by the lot of them, whether actually Vance was the driver of that. Because the sense you got, looking at the body language of Trump and Zelensky, was of a kind of genuine conversation going on. And the rhetoric from Trump since then, this may not last, but it has been a bit softer in Ukraine and a bit harder on Putin.
19:50 Alastair Campbell? And it came 24 hours or even less after Witkoff, who I, you know, the special envoy for all the things that Rubio ought to be doing, had his fourth meeting with Putin, literally looking like a fanboy and all coming out and saying it was positive, it was constructive and da, da, da, da. So I think sometimes, maybe I'm just being too hopeful and optimistic, but I got. The sense that Zelensky seemed to be able to get through to Trump in a way that he'd never had done before.
20:16 Rory Stewart? Although, of course.
20:17 Alastair Campbell? And of course, people were saying this was the Pope, this was the work of the Pope, this was his final act.
20:21 Rory Stewart? But I guess that the thing we never know about Trump is, and the fear is that it depends who the last person to talk to is.
20:27 Alastair Campbell? Totally, totally.
20:28 Rory Stewart? We've had that stuff in his first term where Cohen, who was his tariff and trade advisor, would think that he'd had a brilliant meeting, totally convinced him, and then two days later, somebody else got to him. And and I guess the problem is that you're, if I got you in a less good mood, your instinct would probably be in the long run, forced to choose between a personality like Putin and a personality like Zelensky. Trump's sympathy is with the kind of Putin type, isn't it?
20:52 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, well, you were talking, you you're going to be seeing Joan Hill later, and she said that was, you know, whenever he's in the room with a strong man, he feels he has to identify with the strong man. That being said, I think Zelensky comes over as a pretty strong guy.
21:03 Rory Stewart? Yeah, and actually, there was, Trump said in that first meeting, didn't he, you're a tough guy. I know you're a tough guy, you're behaving like a tough guy. And I also felt sorry for Zelensky in that first meeting. I know he's been criticised a great deal, including in Ukraine for it, but remember the advice that he would have received, both from, you know, Canadian trade negotiators, EU trade negotiators, is that Trump likes strength.
21:23 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
21:23 Rory Stewart? He's a bully. You've got to stand up to him. So Zelensky presumably went into that first meeting in the White House thinking, I've got to be strong.
21:29 Alastair Campbell? But also, the other point I think is worth making, do you remember we said at the time, I think we did a sort of emergency podcast, didn't we, on the back of the Zelensky thing? We said at the time that I think one of the worst things about the whole American diplomatic media operation is this thing where they get the cameras in before the meeting. What was good about this meeting, even though it was only fifteen minutes long, was that there was no, there were no, there were no journalists there to sort of throw questions, because you know that if if a journalist is there and throws a question at Trump, he's going to, that's where his attention goes.
21:58 Rory Stewart? And presumably, Zelensky could, I don't know if that's right, but presumably, Zelensky could have begun that little quiet meeting apologising if he felt that was going to help him.
22:06 Alastair Campbell? Possibly, but then I think would, Trump would have said, I had a great meeting, you apologise for he's not wearing a suit or whatever. I doubt he would have done that. But I think what's happening in in in Ukraine, it still feels to me like the Ukrainians are under huge pressure to concede an awful lot of things that they don't want to do, and to concede a Crimea seems to me to have, forget it, then the four provinces. I think that the sense you get is that. Zelensky is up for doing a deal, but he can't afford to do a deal that is seen as a victory for Putin. And, you know, right now, I think what the Americans are asking him to do is way over what he can be expected to do.
22:44 Rory Stewart? Well, I think we've got about the halfway point. So we take a quick break, and then I'd like to make a little last point on Ukraine military, and then we'll get on to local elections.
22:51 Alastair Campbell? Great.
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24:47 Rory Stewart? Welcome back to The Rest Is Politics with me, Rory Stewart.
24:49 Alastair Campbell? And me, Alastair Campbell.
24:50 Rory Stewart? So, Alistair, I wanted to just update people a little bit on my sense of where we are with the military situation in Ukraine and what options, as you say, Zelensky's got. And I spent fair time yesterday talking to a number of people, including somebody I'm a real admirer of called Jack Watling from Rusi, who I keep praising, who spends a lot of time, about half his time, in Ukraine, a lot of time in the US.
25:14 Alastair Campbell? He's also a very good writer.
25:15 Rory Stewart? He's good. He's really good. One of the things I think that we need to look at is that in predicting, and we're about to put out this leading interview with Sir Alex Younger.
25:25 Alastair Campbell? On Monday.
25:26 Rory Stewart? It's going to be great and really encourage people to talk to him, former head of SIS.
25:30 Alastair Campbell? MI6, I think most of our listeners know.
25:31 Rory Stewart? MI6. Sir Alex, you'll find, is more on the optimistic side in a way about Ukraine, because he's saying that Russia has really been through the meat grinder, that it'll be very difficult for Russia to make advances, and that it will be four, five years before Russia will be in any position to threaten another European country. And that means that if Europe gets its skates on, and if Britain invests properly in defence, and Germany invests properly in defence, and we really sort ourselves out, we should be able to contain Putin without US.
26:00 Alastair Campbell? Big ifs in there.
26:01 Rory Stewart? A lot of big ifs, a lot of big ifs, which we'll get into in a second. So, these are the big ifs I wanted to present you with. Number one, we can talk about the current military situation. The current military situation is that Russia is losing a lot of troops, struggling to make much advance. Ukraine is currently losing fewer troops per day, but going into next year, the question is who's going to be better at recruiting? Is Ukraine going to be able to mobilise soldiers recruiting or Russia? And that gets the question of Putin's will and the Russian people's will, and the same with Ukraine.
26:35 Alastair Campbell? Putin's will is more important in this than the Russian people's will. Whereas I think Zelensky probably does have to take the people's will more into account.
26:42 Rory Stewart? And the question of Putin's will is going to be critical because the narrative that he'll be getting at the moment is, yeah, you're suffering a lot of losses. But in the end, momentum's on your side. Keep going, keep pushing, this will be fine. So the message he'll be getting, Putin will be getting at the moment from his intelligence people is, yeah, okay, you're suffering a lot of losses. It's costly, but don't worry, your leverage is increasing over time. Now, there are a lot of unknowns here. What happens if the oil price collapses, for example, which would have a real effect on the Russian economy? What's Trump gonna do, which is the stuff that you're gonna talk about? And I think that's probably pretty central. And then the final question is, in the situation in which Trump cuts off support, how much trouble is Ukraine in?
27:27 Rory Stewart? You know, how much does Ukraine depend on US weapons? How much does it depend on European security? How much can it do on its own? Can I start you though, on your question of where you think, you know, stepping aside from that moment in the Vatican? What's your general sense of the trend on Putin and Trump?
27:43 Alastair Campbell? Well, it's very hard to read. If I was just relying upon that meeting with Whitkoff and what Trump said thereafter, and what Trump's people say thereafter. I would have thought the dial has not moved at all, and that he's very much in the pushing Zelensky into a deal that he knows Zelensky doesn't want to do. But in the end, he thinks that between them, they can sort of muscle him into doing it. That's why I thought it was so interesting that he had this, I don't think I'd ever heard this phrase. He said he was being, he was worried he was being tapped along. Which was a kind of interesting choice of words, but I think what he meant was Putin's kind of maybe trying to take me for a bit of a fool.
28:15 Rory Stewart? And he hates being sucker, doesn't he?
28:16 Alastair Campbell? He hates people thinking that he's weak. And I think that one of the attacks that's been landing through a lot of these Democrats. I mean, people say the Democrats haven't got their act together, and I agree with that. But one of the lines of attack that keeps going in is that actually he's weak. And he's weak to Putin, and he's weak in the face of China, and he's on the tariffs and so forth. So my sense is that something did change. But as you said earlier, he's so mercurial, it can just as quickly change back again. The point I worry about in relation to, you said, you know, American, what happens without American support and what happens if Europe doesn't step up? I think Europe, right through this whole thing, has
28:59 Alastair Campbell? Talked a better game than it's delivered. I think Keir Starmer has done a very good job with Macron in in lead, and I think Merz is going to be very important in this as well. But I still, if I was Zelensky, I think I would be sitting there thinking, I'm not a hundred percent convinced that if the Americans do pull the plug, that actually I will have the support that I need to keep this thing going, even though they have completely changed their defence industry, their manufacturing capacity and everything else.
29:23 Rory Stewart? When we discussed this issue a few weeks ago, we talked about a kind of different options for Ukraine. And we had, on the most optimistic side from the Ukrainian point of view, full US support, US security guarantees, US money, US kit. And then on the most pessimistic side, we had US withdrawals, no money, little US kit, and Europe doesn't really step out, Ukraine's on its own.
29:48 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, the coalition of the willing becomes a rhetorical device rather than something that really means something.
29:54 Rory Stewart? And situations changed in the last few weeks. We can now see more clearly that obviously there's not going to be US money. We know that for sure. It's now clear that Zelensky is not going to get all the American kit. So America has now made it clear it's not going to supply any more Patriot missiles, which is a real problem for air defence, keeping back those Russian planes. It's also becoming clear, we know now that Macron was completely wrong, there will be no US security guarantees for Ukraine. So you remember when Macron went to the White House, he came out saying, you know, I've been talking to Trump. Trump has made it absolutely clear again and again, he may be mercurial, but one thing he's been clear about, there will be no US security guarantees for Ukraine. So the best case scenario we're left with, I think, is that the US continues to provide security guarantees for NATO.
30:41 Rory Stewart? I mean, it's extraordinary that we're saying that's our best case scenario, right? So that Europe is confident that mainland Europe would be protected by the United States and therefore Europe can take some risk and move support forward to Ukraine. If they don't get that, they're going to think, well, we can't actually move brigades, training, support, equipment forward to Ukraine because we're actually going to be vulnerable from a Russian attack on the rest of Europe. So if the US will really guarantee NATO, Europe can move some support forward, but there's still problems and.
31:12 Rory Stewart? The biggest problem probably is in the missiles which are currently being fired. And you know, people like Jack Wilding are really interested in this because of course, he has to be careful because he's having classified conversations. So what he would keep saying is, Rory, honestly, you and Alistair cannot know exactly what's happening because we're not going to tell you exactly what's in the European logistical supply or what's in the Ukrainian stockpiles. But at the middle of this is this thing called guided multiple launch rocket systems. And these are things which are HIMARS, for example. These are things manufactured in the US or with a lot of US ownership over them. And they're governed by US law on arms exports. And there is a strong possibility that Trump may stop supplying them.
31:57 Rory Stewart? Either because he doesn't want the war to continue because he's got that gut instinct that you've talked about in the past, which is he wants to lift sanctions on Russia, do business with Russia and claim peace. Or because other people in his administration, like Waltz, his national security advisor, is saying, we need this kit in the Asia Pacific to take on China.
32:15 Alastair Campbell? And is this the stuff that the Germans have got?
32:18 Rory Stewart? Right, so German tourists could do this.
32:20 Alastair Campbell? Right.
32:21 Rory Stewart? But again, there's a lot of questions about will Germany give permission for it? And how's the data link going to work? Because some of this stuff is connected to American satellites. And where is the logistics supply line and who's going to provide the training? So there's a lot of questions about getting tourists into the gap. If you can't get these kinds of things operating, what they're currently doing is keeping Russia well back from the frontline. And these missiles are making sure that Russia's logistics, supplies, planes are all.
32:52 Alastair Campbell? And presumably Putin's waiting so that protective shield, as it were, goes. And then he thinks he's he's full on. Because the one thing Alex Younger says is Putin has never, ever changed his core objective, which is basically to wipe out Ukraine, to take the whole of Ukraine.
33:06 Rory Stewart? Absolutely. So so that will be the moment people really begin to worry. And and that's the moment which I guess nobody can really predict because there are so many ifs. Will Putin blink? Probably not. Will Trump let Russia off the hook? My suspicion is he probably will in the end.
33:25 Alastair Campbell? Certainly has the capacity to, yeah. Will Europe step up?
33:27 Rory Stewart? Will Europe step up? Now, to you on that to finish.
33:30 Alastair Campbell? Well, I'm I I think they want to, and I think they want to talk about doing so as as part of the pressure that goes on Putin. But I think if you. Think about some of the economic considerations of the the sorts of sums that we're talking about. I think a lot will depend on Merz once he comes in. Interestingly, Schultz went to the funeral, the Vatican, sitting next to Prince William. Um, not Merz, but I I think a lot will depend on Merz.
33:54 Rory Stewart? And Pistorius is a useful.
33:56 Alastair Campbell? Absolutely. Keeping Pistorius as Defence Minister, definitely the right thing to do. I think we said that a few weeks ago. We hoped that he would do that. So I think that that sort of Starmer, Macron, Merz, Tusk alliance is going to decide and dictate along with Ursula von der Leyen, who keeps plugging away with all all the rest. My final point, there was a fascinating revelation from Kim Jong Un. It's amazing how news comes out. North Korean state media reported that he's ordered the building of a monument for soldiers who have been killed fighting for Russia in the war against Ukraine. And this is the first time they've actually admitted that there are North Korean troops there. And it turns out that they
34:39 Alastair Campbell? the estimate is that they've sent something like fourteen thousand troops there and three to four thousand have been killed. So that you presumably there we are literally talking about Kalanfodder.
34:50 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
34:50 Alastair Campbell? That they're being put into what Alex called the meat grinder.
34:54 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
34:54 Alastair Campbell? But it was, I mean, what a wave that to come out. I mean, I'm sure they've been denying that North Koreans were there and suddenly it says we're building a monument to them.
35:01 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
35:02 Alastair Campbell? So shall we move to the UK?
35:05 Rory Stewart? So local election's coming and this big story seems to be that people are expecting Reform Nigel Farage's party to do very well. That the Tories are likely to have a pretty miserable time.
35:15 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
35:15 Rory Stewart? And Labour's likely also to be a bit disappointed. Is that right?
35:18 Alastair Campbell? I think so. I think I I was talking to people over the weekend who've been campaigning in some of the mayoral, we've got half a dozen mayoral contests going on. And the big winner.
35:29 Alastair Campbell? Seems to be a sort of disgruntled apathy. And what Reform have done is really kind of, they really have gone out to a base and they've managed to mobilise probably more people than the other two part, the main parties will be able to do. It's actually a very difficult picture to predict because it's relatively, some of the councils aren't, because of local government reorganisation, they're not having elections. There's none in Scotland, there's none in Wales, none in London, none in most of the big cities. So it's going to be, you're not going to get that big a picture. But the picture that I think will emerge, one is of low turnout. Brackets, which is why we should have compulsory voting for local as well as national elections, in my view.
36:05 Rory Stewart? And David Gork, who I saw yesterday, was saying that he's seen very, very few posters around it. So he's, he lives in his old constituency.
36:13 Alastair Campbell? I think posters.
36:13 Rory Stewart? He used to do local elections a lot. He's very struck, there's so little visibility for it.
36:17 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, but I, I think posters are sort of vanished because so much of this stuff is going online and under the radar. But I, I think a lot of the councils are going to end up as no, no overall control. That is where you're going to have this tension at a local level as to whether the Tories go into coalition with Reform. Because a lot of these councils, the Tory, some Tory councils are going to go to no overall control. Some of these mayoralities are going to be won by Reform, got no doubt about that. And that, you see, I, I felt at the last election, even though Farage only got five MPs, now four. There's no doubt that has helped Reform. And if they now get a couple of senior executive positions, one of which will be the ridiculous middle finger giving Andrea Jenkins.
37:01 Alastair Campbell? But that then gives them the next level of that platform. But my, my big worry from Labour's perspective about these elections is how they react to them. I really worry that they're going to misread what's going on here. And I was talking to somebody the other day, I thought put this really well, who shares my concern. He said, the problem I get, the sense of Labour at the moment, is that we're trying to ape Reform where they're strong and ignore them where they're weak. So, pick up the Daily Telegraph yesterday and it was Starmer to crack down on migrants after the local elections. That's the aping part. Where I think Reform are unbelievably weak is on the economy. It's on Putin, it's on Trump, it's on Brexit.
37:47 Alastair Campbell? And these are, these are places where Labour just aren't going for them.
37:51 Rory Stewart? I, I'm really, you're completely right. I, I, I want to get into the sort of bigger stuff for a second. But on your point there, the narrative that we've got coming out of Canada and Australia is that right wing populists.
38:03 Alastair Campbell? Take them on.
38:04 Rory Stewart? Do badly in an age of Trump, because everybody's so embarrassed and appalled by Trump. And of course, all these right wing populists have expressed their adoration of Trump and no one more than Nigel Farage, who of course was always taking cheesy photographs with him.
38:16 Alastair Campbell? Happy birthday, Donald.
38:18 Rory Stewart? All, all that sort of stuff.
38:19 Alastair Campbell? We owe this to Steve Bannon and all that stuff.
38:21 Rory Stewart? So what on earth is going on in Britain that in, in these other elections, Trump has been completely toxic for Poliev and Dutton. But in this Anglo country, Trump is not proving toxic for Farage. Is it just that people have not been good enough at pinning it on him?
38:39 Alastair Campbell? I don't think they've really tried to pin on him. I mean, the, look, the way you have to hand it to Farage as a communicator and as a campaigner, he bounces around from one issue to the next. But here's another thing, right? He's big on net zero. Okay. Now, I was sent this thing yesterday.
38:54 Rory Stewart? Not, not in the way that you're big on.
38:55 Alastair Campbell? Not in the way that you and I would be big on net zero. He, he basically, and, and to the Telegraph today, the front page of the Telegraph today, net zero blame for Spain blackout. Blamed by who? The headline writer of the Daily Telegraph. But so somebody, this, this group called Persuasion UK, they've been doing really deep polling on what they call reform curious Labour voters. So these are people who voted Labour, who, who is sort of vaguely thinking they might vote reform. And they've talked to thousands of them.
39:25 Rory Stewart? Yep.
39:25 Alastair Campbell? Thousands. And they've got some really, really interesting findings. And, and one of them is that it's basically a myth that we can call reforms voters, Labour's lost voters. Three quarters of them have never voted Labour, ever, in a single election, ever. Where Labour, I think, is at risk of making a terrible mistake on this. So 11% of the 2024 Labour vote is reform curious, thinking, hmm, maybe reform.
39:56 Alastair Campbell? The numbers for the Greens and Lib Dems, Green twenty nine percent, Lib Dem forty one percent. In other words, with so much, because Farage is so good at driving the media narrative, I think there's a real danger that Labour buy into that narrative and say, we have to be more like Farage. No, we have to take Farage apart and be less like Farage and give the country a positive, forward-looking narrative that we can all buy into.
40:22 Rory Stewart? I also think that sort of partly answered my own question on Farage and Trump. I don't think British voters see Farage as a pseudo-Trump in a way that they might Poli Air or Dutton, because he actually hasn't been sort of fierce about, you know, departments of government efficiency, and in part because he's seen as this kind of jovial joker. He's able to avoid what Poli Air and Dutton have, which is that slight sort of right-wing, aggressive, I'm going to rip the whole thing up stuff.
40:52 Alastair Campbell? Oh, I don't agree. I absolutely think Farage has got so much on the record that you could absolutely do the same job. Just take the thing about Putin, right? I did that interview years and years and years ago for GQ with Farage where he talked about he admired Putin, okay? Now, that should be hung round his neck everywhere he goes. Brexit should be hung round his neck everywhere he goes. He's never asked about Brexit. Now, I could argue, and I do, that that's a failure of our media.
41:19 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
41:19 Alastair Campbell? But it's also a failure of campaigning.
41:21 Rory Stewart? Yeah, of the political parties. And you're quite right, the Australians and Canadians very much played images of Trump against those right-wing opponents. Let me pick up another point that you made, which I think is really interesting, which is fragmentation, because what these polls actually show-
41:35 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, we're in five-party politics.
41:36 Rory Stewart? Yeah, I mean, Sam Freedman, west of England, five parties were within a few percent of each other. So I think it was Liberals at sort of twenty-three percent, Conservatives at twenty-one percent, all the others-
41:46 Alastair Campbell? Dems, Greens.
41:47 Rory Stewart? High teens.
41:48 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
41:49 Rory Stewart? And that means fragmentation, that means small majorities, that means coalitions, as you say, that means a much more volatile type of politics. It means much less experience in local councils and parliaments because things flip over much more quickly.
42:05 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
42:05 Rory Stewart? And also means that we may need to start thinking seriously about our electoral system. So one of the sad things is that we used to have a situation for these mayoral votes in London, for example.
42:16 Alastair Campbell? Supplementary vote.
42:17 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
42:17 Alastair Campbell? We said Labour could have changed that.
42:19 Rory Stewart? I know.
42:19 Alastair Campbell? Johnson did that.
42:20 Rory Stewart? I know.
42:21 Alastair Campbell? To help himself.
42:22 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
42:22 Alastair Campbell? And Labour could have changed it very simply.
42:25 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
42:25 Alastair Campbell? And they're going to lose, one of these mayoral elections, they are going to lose because they didn't change it.
42:29 Rory Stewart? It was so weird. It was so weird. And of course, I could see the problem. And the problem was that when I was running to be the London Mayor, there was a moment where I could sense that Sadiq Khan thought, okay, there's a very narrow chance that Rory could do this because he could do a Macron trick. He could come second to me in the first round. I don't make 50% and then he could pick up the other votes that comes through. So actually, Labour nodded through that.
42:55 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
42:55 Rory Stewart? Tory change.
42:56 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
42:56 Rory Stewart? And then the second thing is what's happening with local democracy? Because as an MP, so many of the issues that mattered to constituents.
43:04 Alastair Campbell? Are local.
43:05 Rory Stewart? Very local.
43:06 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
43:06 Rory Stewart? Well, you know, what are Cumbrians really care about? They're really caring about local housing, local schools, local roads. All this stuff is very, very local council business.
43:18 Alastair Campbell? This is why I think, two things to watch on the vote. One is, this will probably be the first election where the two big parties are below a half. Okay? That's already happened in the polls, and we're going to see that then in the turnout. But the turnout's going to be incredibly low. And I think, again, that is because we haven't, we haven't built enough of the argument, the connection between voting and delivery. And that's what feeds this kind of populist message. You know, it's Farage's message, he'd been going around the country, basically saying, he deletes the place and just says, Oxfordshire is broken. You know, Staffordshire is broken.
43:57 Rory Stewart? Right.
43:57 Alastair Campbell? You know, Burnley is broken.
43:59 Rory Stewart? Right.
43:59 Alastair Campbell? And he goes there, he has no solutions whatsoever. None.
44:02 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
44:03 Alastair Campbell? But I never see him properly taken apart.
44:06 Rory Stewart? By people.
44:06 Alastair Campbell? Over these arguments, over other politicians. And of course, the other thing with Brexit and Trump.
44:11 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
44:11 Alastair Campbell? I understand why, if you're the Labour government right now and you're trying to avoid having to choose between America and Europe, you're trying to get something out of Trump, you're trying to, so Keir Starmer's trying to sort of keep and maintain a relationship, you maybe think, well, I Keir Starmer, I David Lammy, don't want to have a Farage strategy that's about linking him to Trump being a negative. But it doesn't mean you can't have campaigns doing that by other people. And likewise with Brexit, if you don't want to talk about Brexit, then don't be surprised if people forget that Nigel Farage was a big architect of this disaster that's taken, you know, five percent out of the economy.
44:49 Rory Stewart? So my final thought, we'll limp out of this election with a low turnout, a fragmented vote, far more votes going to almost unknown Reform candidates, who are going to come into these quite responsible positions in local government, big budgets, some of them got seven hundred and fifty million pound a year budgets, responsible for the things that really change individual lives. And
45:12 Alastair Campbell? And it'll just be seen as part of the national game.
45:14 Rory Stewart? Part of the national game. And we see in France, you know, how a mayor of Bordeaux can really turn Bordeaux around. In the United States, a great governor can transform a state. Switzerland, where I've, you know, been a lot in the last few months, you can see local democracy really operating well. When is Britain going to crack the fact that politics is local, our interests are local? It doesn't mean it's one size fits all, but in Cumbria, for example, I saw again and again that if you were trying to sort out how to deliver housing or renewable energy project, if you involve the community from the beginning, made them feel ownership, you'd actually get stuff built. It's actually where speeding up infrastructure, not delaying. So where is the radical thinking about how
45:56 Rory Stewart? to make democracy work? I mean, one of the reasons why Britain feels broken is people are so distanced from it. If the only thing they see is a tweet or a Facebook post, as opposed to what we got at our best in Cumbria, which is saying, okay, look, there's something you're really angry with, affordable housing, we're sitting down in Crosby Ravensworth. Here's a brownfield site. Here's David who's going to lead the plan. This is where the money's coming from. This is what our financial options are. Suddenly, everybody has a much more positive view. It's no longer, this is rubbish. There's no housing for our kids. There's no growth. They see the houses going up and they're involved in designing it.
46:33 Alastair Campbell? Well, the charity event we were at last night, Kim McGinnis, who's Labour Mayor up in the North East, was there and she was saying, and I completely agree with this, you know, the answer should be more devolution. And do you remember before the election when we were looking at lots of different polling, the figures who were emerging as more popular than the national politicians were the people like Andy Burnham, Tracy Brabham.
46:56 Rory Stewart? Andy Street, yeah.
46:57 Alastair Campbell? Exactly. Even though he lost. So that sort of sense of giving people local, regional leadership has to be part of this. And look, one of the things I've been disappointed about is there's not been that sense of kind of civic democratic renewal. And I know even as I say that, there'll be people in the kind of Labour strategy side of things saying, you know, what do we want civic democratic renewal? You know, I get that. But actually fixing our politics has got to be part of taking on the populist virus. Anyway, there we are. I think the other thing to remember, of course, is the by-election as well because of Mike Amesbury deciding to connect with the electorate in a very.
47:37 Rory Stewart? Yeah. And not in a good Prescott fashion, but a bad fashion.
47:40 Alastair Campbell? Bad fashion and going to jail. And so Labour were, I think, over half of the vote and Reform were second, way, way, way, way back. Now, I've been talking to people who've been up there. They say that Reform will only get in if the turnout is very, very low. But again, we're talking about a time when people aren't turning out to vote. And that is usually a sign of, rather than anger, it's a sort of sense of disgruntlement and disappointment. And I, you know, I was saying last night, the event we did, I was saying that that, in the end, that can only be met by a real sense of purpose and mission about what the government is for, what the government is trying
48:23 Alastair Campbell? to do and tying that together in a, in a narrative that at the moment, I think, is very, very disparate. And the one thing, talking to people who've been out on the, you know, knocking on the famous doorstep, the one thing that keeps coming up again and again and again and again is, have a guess?
48:37 Rory Stewart? Cost of living?
48:38 Alastair Campbell? No, something more specific. Winter fuel.
48:42 Alastair Campbell? Keeps coming up as and and if you go back, that was the first big thing the government did in a way.
48:48 Rory Stewart? And no party, no party seems to be offering return of winter fuel allowance or none of the major.
48:55 Alastair Campbell? Because the other parties are basically just letting Labour take it.
48:57 Rory Stewart? Conservatives, Labour or Reform.
48:59 Alastair Campbell? Well, Reform will offer whatever they'd say to get them over the the next twenty seconds in the conversation. But then the other thing that is now coming through in a similar way is the the the welfare changes, the benefit changes. And the reason why Reform are hammering the immigration asylum message so strongly isn't just because that's what they've always done, it's because they can, they feel they can make that link, you know, oh, well, you know, the asylum seekers, they're getting everything they want, which is not true, but it's what they say. And meanwhile, you can't get your winter fuel payment and you and your your mum who's struggling to walk up the stairs anymore, she can't get her P I P. So that is, and I and I think these things, and I know how difficult it is, and I know
49:39 Alastair Campbell? how hard the economic conditions are, but at some stage, I think they're going to have to look at that because the the the winter fuel payment, it's kind of gone off the agenda in terms of the media debate, but you talk to anybody who's out there at the moment, that is coming through again and again and again and again.
49:56 Rory Stewart? And then final one, of course, is immigration, which is where we're yet to see them learning the lessons from Denmark. So Mette Frederiksen is a very interesting example of a left wing politician who has done a very strident policy on control of immigration. Netherlands is also interesting, trying to set targets on numbers. Germany is in a really interesting conversation with Friedrich Metz. And my sense is that Keir Starmer and Yvette Cooper haven't quite found their feet because they're still fighting the Rwanda battle of the past. They need to be serious about safe third country, they need to be learning from what
50:37 Rory Stewart? Denmark and the more thoughtful legal approaches that Germany is considering.
50:42 Alastair Campbell? But this this persuasion UK argument, it's very, very long. I haven't even got to the end of it yet. It's about seventy five, seventy six pages, really detailed stuff. But they essentially are saying, for example, net zero, these reform curious voters. They are not buying Farage's line on net zero. They know that the planet is kind of burning and they want the government to do something about it. Net zero actually emerges as one of the most popular. Late, the government's approach on net zero emerges as one of the most popular policies. So I think the, the, in a sense, we're back to the thing about, you know, social conservatism on some issues, you know, patriotism and the armed forces and your friends, the monarchy, all that stuff, fine.
51:22 Alastair Campbell? But then don't assume that just because the media narrative is driving this sort of conservatism, Farageism on some of the big culture issues, don't assume that the country doesn't know what needs to be done and kind of wants it done. And that goes as well for some of the taxation issues. Good. Thank you very much. Speak tomorrow with Question Time. See you tomorrow.
52:01 Speaker 07 The great game, strategic struggle between Britain and Russia.
52:08 Speaker 08 We assess, uh, Prime Minister, with high confidence it was Russian.
52:14 Speaker 05 Holding the Russians accountable is World War III.
52:16 Speaker 09 They took down a British passenger jet containing three hundred and fifty people.
52:19 Speaker 07 Man in the Kremlin is playing, Alex. Got to ask yourself, do you want to play or not? You're the Prime Minister. You've done nothing!
52:33 Speaker 10 We would need to understand the policy context.
52:35 Speaker 07 All the relevant context will be structured as a framework today and disseminated into an operation order or Farage.
52:44 Speaker 11 A Farage that says to kill the President of Russia?
52:48 Speaker 07 Yes.
52:50 Speaker 11 New from Goldhanger. Who is going to be able to pull this off?
52:55 Speaker 09 You're my soldier, are you Sergeant Tom McDuff, Duffy?
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53:01 Speaker 09 Men like Duffy, they are our most valuable weapons.
53:05 Speaker 11 Devized as a technically rigorous geopolitical action thriller. We have two tight friendly KIAU. Where Britain plays its strongest hand. He's the best. Against its strongest foe.
53:17 Speaker 11 Bear Hunt. Available now wherever you get your podcasts.
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